Orewa Beach and Waiwera Thermal Spa Resort

Well, our first Saturday in New Zealand we had a beach day planned...unfortunately we didn't realize it would be raining quite as much when we got here as it has been. We decided the beach was too much to pass up over a little rain so we went out anyway. Our first beach trip was to Orewa Beach which is like 30-40 minutes from where we are living. We left for the beach a little after 9 AM and when we got there it was still pretty cold...especially since the rain was falling pretty steadily.

 Gathering in the church parking lot for our trip to the beach! I was a bit excited! Can you tell?

 

This is James Amu...he is our master tour guide according to all that I've heard of him. I didn't get a chance to talk to him too much, but keep following and I'm sure I'll be able to tell you much more about him by the time that we leave NZ. He travels with us and drives us around on the South Island in a few weeks, and he will go with us up North in a few months, so I'm sure we'll be good friends before the end of this trip! I've heard he is really amazing!

This is Orewa Beach, even in the rain it is completely beautiful! The funny thing about this excursion was that even though it was raining pretty good, most of our group braved the water, and when we did we discovered that it was actually warmer to get in the water than it was to stay out in the rain.

 This is most of the group that actually braved the water, so as you can see, most of us were so excited to go to the beach that we didn't care if it was a bit chilly! It was really exciting because Stephanie, one of the girls in our group, has never been swimming in the ocean before! It was a big day for her! Sadly because of all the rain, we didn't take a lot of pictures because it was too wet and rainy.

 

 

 

 

 

After we got as cold as we could handle at the beach our wonderful guide suggested a place called Waiwera, which is a thermal pool area basically...this is one of the hottest pools they had there, and it was 40 degrees Celsius I think, so it was very nice and warm. They also had some water slides and a lot of different pools including one movie pool (where they show a movie and you can sit in the pool and watch it) We all got nice and warmed up at this place, and even though we didn't get the day at the beach we had dreamed of, it was still a very fun excursion!

 

At the end of the time at the resort, we all climbed in our vans and started to head home...our van was all full and we assumed everyone else also had a full car...but somehow, no one told the driver of the other van (Ramona's husband) and he didn't check and they were missing thee bodies in their van...luckily we pulled over to have a nice view of Orewa on our way back and someone told us that they were missing people so we headed back and picked up Kirsten, Brooke, and Emily! I'll post more about this day on a separate post, since this one is getting a bit long! Love y'all!